Thursday, 23 October 2014

Profoundly moved (especially in the wake of yesterday's events in Canada) by the Royal British Legion's sunrise to sunset vigil at the Cenotaph today.

See Twitter hashtag #TheWatch for a timeline of the people standing watch, one at each corner, inspired by the images of the repatriation of the Unknown Warrior in
1920 where Guards of the Watch kept a vigil by the coffin as a mark of
respect. Watchers include members of the public, past and present members of the Armed Forces and people who've received help from the Legion.

Wednesday, 15 October 2014

For those of my readers who are interested in Chain of Command and somehow aren't following the blog, forum OR mailing list:
TFL

Building on the back of the At The Sharp End campaign supplement, Too Fat Lardies have just released the first in a series of "Pint Sized" campaigns, namely "29 Let's Go".

The basic premise behind the series appears to be one 32 page downloadable (and printable) PDF, which is a 50/50 mix of well-written and useful historical background to the campaign (with maps), and then a Sharp End-style 'ladder' campaign, with table layouts based on the maps. And all this for the price of a reasonable pint - £3.50. What's not to like? I mean, for the price of a pint, you get of the order of 5-8 evening's entertainment, just add scenery, figures and (optionally) an umpire.

This builds really well on Chain of Command and At The Sharp End, and while I haven't had chance to play any of the scenarios yet, I did get to give it a thorough read.

Sunday, 12 October 2014

I still can't help feel that somewhere, somehow, there's a trick missing in the model railway hobby to reduce costs for producing small runs of obscure things, probably involving some combination of laser cutting and 3D printing. And someone will figure it out and make an absolute killing.

The major manufacturers seem to have decided there is no demand for pre-nationalisation models. If they make something that existed into BR, fine, they'll release one in a pre-BR paint job (but in the GWR case you can guarantee that'll only be in the incredibly short lived and IMO ugly as sin post 1935 or post 1942 ones!) . But it does seem more and more that if it was made before about 1935, the manufacturers aren't interested. Which makes for a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Witness the maddeningly STUPID call by Hornby: let's make some GWR coaches - I know, we'll do the mid-40s Hawkesworth ones, which lasted well into BR days. But so did loads of even more attractive-to-model 1920s/30s Collets. And I can't USE the bloody Hawkesworths, because my planned layout is deliberately set in about 1934-5!). Contrast to (say) Battlefront. They're not quite at the point of 'if it took the field in WW2, we make it', but they're bloody close.

I can't afford to be a serious railway modeller. Sure, metal and plastic armies aren't cheap but... there isn't actually that much difference, price wise, between the (and I'm going to make myself unpopular here - tough!) mass-market (I nearly said 'toy') end of the hobby (40K etc) and the 'serious' end (say, obscure armies for FoG:R). Certainly not enough to make me wince. Compare, though, the difference between a set of Hornby Railroad Collet coaches (about 20 quid a pop) and a set of etched brass Toplight coach kits, which will set you back nearer £100 by the time you add wheels, couplings, buffers etc, and doesn't include the labour costs of building it. And the other core difference there is that the 'serious' railway modellers don't seem to see this as a barrier. The line 'you may as well buy the brass kit' gets tossed around like confetti as if it's an acceptable solution to everyone.

If I was as rude and critical about a PSC test render of (say) a King Tiger as some modellers seem to be directly to Bachman (for example) about nitpickingly small details in their mockup of a GWR 64xx Pannier, I'd expect Will to punch me in the face. And I'd feel I'd deserved it. Lumme. Talk about entitlement issues.

The above pretty much summarise why, while I will probably slowly construct the GWR layout I have designs on over time, you can guarantee I'll never put it up for scrutiny within the hobby.

Saturday, 11 October 2014

"Foolishly I forgot to book a stand at the SELWG, Crystal Palace show this Sunday 12th October. To mark my stupidity and apologise for those customers expecting to see us there, we will be running a sale starting today and running through until midnight Sunday 12th October:"

Sale in the "No SELWG" (25% off all PSC kits and paints!!!), SCW (15%) and Ancients (10% - good job my Greeks are on hold) categories.

Friday, 10 October 2014

One of the reasons I made a conspicuous effort to blog every day is that once a thing becomes a habit, it becomes harder to break.

Witness what happens when I stop blogging for a bit :D

In the past month or so, I are mostly:

Editing 2 1/2 hours x 7 cameras worth of video from the WorldCon

Snapping up odd bits of GWR stuff for the son and my model railway

Thinking about various things to do with the Lardies' Quadrant 13 and IABSM

Getting my fingers used to playing bass rather than guitar again (ow! picking hand blisters!)

Apparently becoming a Responsible Adult at work now my boss has left (his boss, now my boss, seems to expect this of me, especially since the other candidate Responsible Adult just left as well)

Playing a fair bit of Dreadball and Dead Man's Hand at the club.

So. There will be blogging. I'm going to figure out a schedule I can commit to, not just for this but for all the other non-work things that have demands on my time, and there will be regular posts again!